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New Rules of the Game, or New Game? Part One

“I joined organizations, attended conferences religiously, subscribed to journals, and made every attempt to connect to and garner the attention of those in the ‘inner circle’ — the members of steering committees, working groups, and editorial boards, as well as the chairs of leading University departments. But, while I still maintain those ties, I now find that I learn much more about ‘what’s going on’ in my discipline from reading a growing collection of daily personal and professional weblogs than I ever did from the seven papers that would be published once a month in my favorite journal. And, the information currency of these two sources is vastly different. By the time an interesting finding or report makes its way through the critiquing, revision-ing, and publishing process, it’s no longer current — especially when I’ve read about that idea four months earlier in a weblog.” John Kruper —New Rules of the Game, or New Game? Part One (Home on the Blog)

Each year, I find that incoming freshmen are more experienced with the Internet, and need less and less ramp-up time before they are able to think critically about online culture. Incoming freshmen don’t have to unlearn three decades spent mastering the printed culture of academia. The experiencded faculty members who make the tenure and promotions decisions often need a much more basic introduction to the culture of online texts. A colleage at Seton Hill was recently asked not to include a CD in his promotion dossier — only print material, thank you. How does a new media newbie teach the old media experts, without patronizing them or making them feel threatened?